Huston was one of the bartenders when I used to spend A LOT of time at Dirty Frank's, in Philadelphia (maybe 1989-1993 or so). Well... Frank's and McGlinchey's, back and forth.

This is funny to see, a picture of the long-gone Philadelphia gallery Gallery Axiom, 1991(?), with Huston's work in the upstairs window and my stuff in the downstairs window.

(Does anybody remember Annie Somerville's collaborative space that was down the street??? What was that called? Any pictures? It was on the second floor, over a liquor store.. a HUGE space that they made into a live/work/exhibition/band/party place.... I'm not sure if I'm spelling Annie's name right.)

Jonathan Meese- painting, supertramp, mel brooks, hitler salute, hot sun, painting, painting on his body, outdoor ampitheatre, older woman... "thank you mommy", running all around with a hand mirror, dancing, up in the stands, hopping up and down with the nazi salute and a handmirror, to supertramp.

carianacarianne - selves indulgent... get over yourselves.... like trying to have an imaginary friend without having the imagination.... a sad twist on every man's fantasy; instead of two girls with half a brain, it's one hyper-neurotic girl. YUK!

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

The tarps are up.... not just tarps, but also large pieces of burlap - smells good. I was wondering if they would be up or if the court decision had come through and maybe they would be down. I didn't take any photos in the tarp alley... you can see some photos on-line in the newspaper articles.

Okay, you first walk in through the old movie house... it is all burlaped up... then into the main space starting in a burlap cul-de-sack becoming a mostly tarp corridor. They have been pretty good at closing all the seams, not many peek-through chances, but you can of course see the tops of things, and some large shapes through the burlap. The space has been very much cleaned up... it really isn't like a Buchel installation at all; the floor is swept clean, no detritus at all.

At the end you enter a closed gallery space containing Made at Mass Moca, photos and text documenting the previous shows that occupied the Building 5 space; Robert Rauschenburg, Tim Hawkinson, Ann Hamilton, Robert Wilson, Cai Guo Qiang, Carsten Holler. A Mass Moca staff person was talking to a reporter from Switzerland in here.... he had come all the way because of this Buchel controversy.

The second floor of this end gallery space is also open.... it is a large loft-like space which overlooks the main (Buchel) space, and is completely open except for a single table and two chairs. One wall has a long bulletin-board of Buchel/massMoca press clippings, and the opposite side - which would normally overlook the Buchel installation space - is blocked by a long banner which lists all of the materials gathered for the Christoph Buchel installation. The Swiss reporter, in the photo posted above, is studying that banner.

I was a bit suspicious when I saw how "done" the Made at Mass Moca show is - lots of nice signage and banners - and how convenient it is that this end space was available... but I talked with the Mass Moca person while she was speaking to the Swiss reporter, asking about when exactly they started to put this show together and what the previous plans for the space were. She said it was all done QUICK, very last minute... and they all impressed themselves with how fast they were able to get it together. Also that the (first floor) back space was originally going to be part of Buchel's installation, and they just cleared all of the Buchel stuff out.

I'm still thinking that Buchel is an absolute perfectionist who was overwhelmed by the space and flaked out rather than open a less-than stunning show... not that this is something that was planned from the start... and that Mass Moca is trying to make the best of a very bad situation.

I haven't posted on these other shows yet, but there's a lot more to see at Mass Moca then the Buchel-that-is-not-a-Buchel (or is it?)... I've visited Mass Moca FOUR times in the last two months, today to see Spencer Finch and what was happening with Buchel, but the two previous visits were to see The Believers and Erik Lieshout. On that last visit I was able to watch Spencer Finch (by himself) installing his big show.

Point being, there is a LOT to see at Mass Moca... the large group show The Believers, a solo show for Erik Lieshout, a large Spencer Finch retrospective, and of course whatever the courts will allow anyone to see from the abandoned Buchel project. Oh, and Made at Mass Moca, the last-minute show made in the gallery space at the end of the Buchel tarp-maze.

Note that I say I was able to watch Spencer Finch installing his exhibition. That is normal for Mass Moca, many galleries are always on view... it is not unusual to see work-in-progress at Mass Moca. To get to The Believers and Lieshout it was necessary to walk through parts of the Finch space, and once upstairs there are a couple different balcony areas from which we watched Spencer Finch on top of a stepladder hanging pieces of crumpled cellophane (or something).

My impression, and I saw "the show", is that Buchel was overwhelmed by the huge space - unable to finish on-time and within budget - while trying to maintain his demanding character at the same time - and just couldn't deal.... so he abandoned it until safely back home in Switzerland, where he perhaps began to embrace the new nature of the piece.

Really, this works out better for him, because even with ALL of the stuff they put in there (a movie theatre, mobile homes, many vehicles and cinderblock walls and shipping containers, a HOUSE) it still looks all spread-out and very much like you are in a single gigantic room, not the disorienting gosh-am-i-still-at-an-art-show? effect that he is able to get in a more manageable space. The museum putting up a maze of tarps and opening the space without permission is doing him a favor... more notoriety for him, and it will actually look better.

This is more Buchel's speed... a Swiss art fair. Hey, it looks like this dealer must have had a similar problem with Buchel, and they had to cover his piece with rugs.

Man, I pretty much ALWAYS side with the artist, and hate curators claiming artistic liscence... but I have to hand it to Joe Thompson and Mass Moca for one-upping Buchel at his own "subverting the relationship" game.

"Often I dreamed, how was Tbilisi 150 or 200 years ago? Living in the oldest part of Tbilisi, it was quite easy to imagine it myself, as the district is barely touched, but falling apart these days from lack of any repairs. This will change very soon with the implimentation of govermental and private reconstruction programmes. There is a good chance, that what you see here does not exist anymore, except in our imagination and in history. I worked over the last 3 winter month on digital collages on a fictional story about an imaginary horse thief in Old Tbilisi. I tried to catch my private romantic vision of this quarter. I tried to remember the streets and their living inhabitants, the many families from all different origins living in and around Sayat-Nova-Street and to work on artistic problems in my collages. But it became something else"

I'm now thinking this show will not happen, because one of Buchel's stated demands is that the exhibition does not open until at least two months after he returns to Mass Moca to finish it; meaning that if he were to return today the show would not open until July 16 at the earliest. That would be seven months into the run of a ten-month show.

"(I was) wondering if he might just deliberately be pushing a handful of rich people in the most powerful country in the world to see how far he could go."

Ugh, please. If that is what he thinks he is doing, then he doesn't know what he is doing. North Adams is a struggling town, even with Mass Moca. Did Oldershaw see how many empty storefronts there are downtown? There are no rich people in North Adams.

What is Buchel's goal? To take down struggling art museums in dying milltowns? Noble.

Mass Moca is not an established institution with some huge endowment... they don't even have a collection. It is only whatever show(s) they have up at the time. I was at Mass Moca last week, and instead of the usual $10 adult, $8 student fee... it was $5 for everyone, because they don't have enough galleries open (Spencer Finch is installing where the Ahistoric Occassion show was).

"knowing a little bit about the costs and ball-aches that people have to go through when they build his shows, I can't help thinking it's a lot of effort for a relatively small pay-off. Seeing through the smoke, mirrors and fine art disneyland I still wonder what exactly is your point?"Gee, I wonder if Buchel will have his fuck-you merchandise ready in time for Basel?

From the statement for Buchel's most recent super edginess at Hauser & Wirth -

Büchel repeatedly manipulates and exploits the perceived power of the social and legal contract, subverting the relationship between artist and audience while insisting on a more active political role for both.

Sounds good to me. Let's play! I am the audience member that has subverted the relationship further by entering the Mass Moca space and taking a bunch of pictures. I'll post them probably tomorrow.

Okay, a little background. The Empire State Plaza is an Albany, NY centerpiece.. an elevated grouping of several state buildings around a central plaza. All of it is from the 1970's, except for the New York State Capitol at one end. As kids we know this place because of The Egg (and here's an unusual view) and as a place for ice-skating in winter; I'd never thought of it as an art destination.

We visited last weekend and I was excited to take note of all of the sculpture on the plaza... George Rickey, Ellsworth Kelly, Alexander Calder, Claes Oldenburg, and many others... when I saw a security guard I asked if there was a list of all the artists represented and he took me into the Egg and down into this concourse level which I had never known existed. It's a huge hallway under the plaza, connecting everything.... and FILLED with more stuff. The guard got me the list of all the artists in the collection, way more than I was expecting, and so I had to come back another day to see it.

Almost everything in the collection is from late 1960's New York... they must have been acquiring and commissioning work as the Plaza was being built. High Times, Hard Times picks up pretty much exactly where this work leaves off... really nice to see this having seen High Times, Hard Times.

Nicholas Krushenick is the subject of what looks like an excellent survey show at Marianne Boesky right now... serious thanks, James Kalm.Lee Bontecou, Untitled, 1966. This piece is at the end of a looong Al Held.

It's like Logan's Run. I don't remember who did this piece, only half of which is visible here.

The Pollock is gorgeous, lots of poured soaked paint... yellow, blue, silver, brown, black. This was the only piece I saw that didn't have a sign, although the old frame had a small thing affixed to it which gave the title as Number 12, from 1952. I'm wondering if there is no sign because there are some attribution questions or something? I know there is another Jackson Pollock also called Number 12, but from 1949. Whatever this piece is, it's lush.

Without Pollock we would have no Frankenthaler, and without Frankenthaler we would not know Louis... so this stainy Pollock is a good one to show with those two.

Another good painting by an artist whose name I can't recall.... it's like a Kristin Bakerdone by Ben Shahn, which I guess means it's better than a Kristin Baker.

Andy Warhol, Portrait of Nelson Rockefeller, 1967 - Rockefeller was the governor... the whole plaza was his idea; Wallace Harrisonwas the architect. I truly can't imagine a politician today making an art and architecture project like this happen.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Friday, May 11, 2007

YAY! I found more stuff from the Potato Year in my storage locker! Sometimes I am a little nervous posting OLD stuff... but they really made me laugh when I saw them again.

Star-Spangled Potato, 1989

It's a xerox of a potato covered in pushpins.

Normal Potato VS. Insane Potato, 1989

Celestial Potato, 1989

I used to be so weird at the supermarket with the potatoes...

Good thing I'm not weird anymore!

Two Potatoes - Two Worlds, 1989

Oops, I spelled "potatoes" wrong. It was made before Dan Quayle made the famous spelling mistake. One side says something like "He was the All-American Potato", the other sides says things like "He was a quiet potato", "a loner", "nobody ever expected anything like this to happen". I think I originally had this set flat with two potatoes on it...

I still need to figure out what happened to the potato mystery train, and some others. That was a really weird one...

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Laura Sharp Wilson is maybe a new hero... I didArt Basel: Stuffy'slast year, and thought that was a lot of work with fifteen artists, but Laura's show - The Heroes Show- includes almost fifty artists. Plus, all of my artists were Richmonders, while Laura has assembled artists from all over the country.

My Heroes piece is below, along with the short statement provided to let people know who your heroes are. I think all of the statements are collected together in a couple of binders...

My two heroes featured in this piece are the Philadelphia-based collaborative artists and artbloggers Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof.

Through their blog, Libby and Roberta are non-stop Philadelphia art enthusiasts and supporters of their fellow artists... to the extent that their support of others has perhaps overshadowed awareness of their own very interesting artwork. Roberta and Libby have helped to draw artists to Philadelphia, kept artists from deciding to leave Philadelphia, motivated galleries and collectors, and made Philadelphia a much more dynamic and exuberant place for art.

If it were within my power I would give them a huge grant, or a medal or something... but all I can do is to try to capture and relay some of their generous-hearted vibe in this painting.

Thanks, Libby and Roberta!

This worked out really well, because I had pretty much finished this piece before I was invited to be in the show... serendipitous.

Monday, May 07, 2007

My village is for sale!! When I was in NYC last month I talked to a FAMOUS GALLERIST who told me that s/he is thinking of buying property in the country... hey, how about in or around Hoosick Falls???

We have many nice houses available... and some landmark buildings that have hit the skids. Some of these would make great live/work studio buildings.

I was just there a couple weeks ago, taking care of Paco. C'mon, let me show you around!

This is called The American House... it used to be wrapped in porches on all three floors. We used to come here and eat pizza and play pool. My grandfather was in a club called the Derby Club, which met in the bar.

That brick building on the far left used to be a small market called O'Dells, ran by Mary Jane O'Dell and her mother. We would go there for the penny candy. I think Mary Jane is still around, but I haven't seen her since the last time I went to the Kiwanis Chicken Barbecue (at the church where the real Natty Bumpo is buried).

This is St. Mary's Academy, where we went to school. My parents and three of my four grandparents also went to school here. I actually remember being in school here and thinking that these would make nice apartments someday.

BONUS: View from St. Mary's! You can see a bit of the protest house on the left. Unfortunately, the protest house has now been mostly painted over, and is no longer a protest house to the whole town, just to the neighbors on one side.

I heard my first dirty joke down on that corner, by the stop sign, about a lady looking for her dog, named Titswiggle. Have you seen my Titswiggle?

This is almost directly across the street from the window where Grandma Moses' paintings were first discovered! We actually ended up living in one of the apartments above that store for a short time. Here is one of Grandma Moses' pictures of Hoosick Falls....

Some of the shows I saw on my last trip to NYC have been reviewed in the NYTimes, but I would like to read other views on those, and there were many other shows I saw (and some good ones I missed) that I haven't seen noted anywhere.

Here is a list of some of the shows I was interested in but which I haven't seen enough, or ANY, mentions of. It would be nice if they received more attention/discussion. Let me know of any and I can add the link (if there is a link).